Although the U.S. government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal

My name is Assata Shakur, and I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the US government’s policy towards people of color. I am an ex-political prisoner, and I have been living in exile in Cuba since 1984.

I have been a political activist most of my life, and although the U.S. government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal, nor have I ever been one. In the 1960s, I participated in various struggles: the black liberation movement, the student rights movement, and the movement to end the war in Vietnam. I joined the Black Panther Party. By 1969 the Black Panther Party had become the number one organization targeted by the FBI’s COINTELPRO program. Because the Black Panther Party demanded the total liberation of black people, J. Edgar Hoover called it “greatest threat to the internal security of the country” and vowed to destroy it and its leaders and activists. Continue reading →

[This is another in series on electoral politics. In the US, every four years, presidential elections are theatrically staged, designed to confuse and disrupt popular movements against class exploitation and racial oppression, and other democratic movements. The elections claim to be the way democracy works, and people must vote for politicians to represent their interests. Whoever wins, the people’s interests have been lost in the shuffle, and their independence and political initiative and action has been suffocated or destroyed. As the 2016 election candidacies begin to control the political imaginations of millions, a fight-back begins to grow. In this report of a Black Lives Matter protest at a Bernie Sanders campaign event, a BLM leader says no politician deserves automatic support (but leaves open the option for later). — Frontlines ed.]

“He couldn’t take 15 more minutes of the heat,” Cullors said of Sanders in an interview on This Week in Blackness, making reference to the senator ending his appearance as demonstrators at the event walked out en masse.

[It was a rare moment in people’s movements, some 16 months ago, and we just came across it and wanted to share it, with words of caution: this was not a movement aimed at revolutionary overthrow of the Thai monarchy, or a severance of relations with capitalists or imperialism everywhere. It was a militant struggle against corruption and abuse, over local grievances, perceived inequalities, and many collective frustrations. The videos above show the intensity of the struggle when protesters confronted the police. And the picture below shows how remarkable this peaceful protest was, briefly, when the police took off their helmets and dropped their shields in a show of solidarity. But we urge our readers in the US and internationally: don’t expect the police to act like this, anywhere, ever, again. If the instruments of state power ever defect to the people’s side, it will rarely be all at once, and never all together, even for a brief moment. — Frontlines ed.]

December 6, 2013

In Thailand, riot police laid down their helmets and shields, yielding to the peaceful protesters which they had been commanded to arrest.

In a showing of solidarity, police stood aside and allowed protesters to continue on.

Those who had rallied to protest explained that their goal was to confront and overcome the political apparatus of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Shinawatra is accused of widespread corruption and abuse of power, leaving him with few sympathizers among the police.

Young black males are at a far greater risk of being shot dead by police in the United States than their white counterparts, a new study has found.

The killing of Michael Brown in Missouri prompted this Chicago protest against police violence.

Salon.com said on October 13 that Black youths were 21 times more likely to be shot dead by police, according to a ProPublica analysis of federally collected data on fatal police shootings between 2010 and 2012.

The 1217 deadly police shootings over that time captured in the federal data show that Blacks, age 15 to 19, were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million. The study found just 1.47 per million white males in that age range died at the hands of police.

[Increasingly, Indian media reports are little more than repeating a note or memo from the local police. Such reports are clearly not generated by an editor sending out a reporter whose diligent reportorial zeal uncovers something new in the neighborhood, and rushes back with this “breaking news.” — Frontlines ed.]

By Express News Service, 27th October 2014

VADAKARA: Wall posters and notices in the name of banned group CPI (Maoist) appeared at some locations in Vadakara police station limit on Sunday.

The posters also asked the people to join CPI(Maoist) for a new democratic-unexploited India by strengthening the ‘class struggle’.

The posters requested people to be united with the CPI(Maoist) ‘to defeat the imperialist government and its armed forces’. The group also asks the people to reclaim the rights for forest, water and land.